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Why do wild boars proliferate around the world?

author:Junyun

Pigs are one of the most evolved mammals.

40 million years ago, when our earliest ape ancestor, the Chinese Akebono, differentiated from the Old World monkeys, the ancestors of wild boars already appeared in Eurasia.

They span temperate tropics, from semi-arid climates to tropical, temperate rainforests, and even grasslands and deserts.

They travel through forests and swamps and encounter predators at the top of any food chain.

Even 50,000 to 300,000 years ago, they were dominated by the terrifying Homo erectus, but they still savagely became one of the most numerous and widely distributed animals on the planet.

Basically, apart from humans, it's hard to see medium- to large mammals that can divide the world on their own and thrive globally.

Their ancestors, with their fangs and thick skin and flesh, could compete with tigers, lions and other predators.

As the saying goes, "one pig, two bears and three tigers", male wild boars are grumpy and have a strong sense of territory and protection. If you were a hunter who lived in ancient times, encountering a male wild boar in the wild can be something even more terrifying than encountering a tiger. Tigers that have not hunted humans actually have a certain fear of humans, but wild boars are not necessarily.

The territory of the pig herd is as wide as 10 square kilometers.

In general, wild boars weigh in the range of 90-200 kg and are 1.5-2 m long, and some wild boars in northeast China and the Russian Far East can weigh close to 400 kg and can even exceed the size of Siberian tigers.

Why do wild boars proliferate around the world?

This is not to say that the pig's combat effectiveness is necessarily stronger than that of the tiger, but it is mainly reflected in the pig's disposition.

The male pig is not only aggressive, but also engages in sneak attacks from 20 to 30 meters away. Even thick-skinned pigs fighting between pigs often result in skull fractures and death.

Individual human beings without weapons are simply incapable of fighting in front of them. But in fact, even if a person holds a low-end weapon like an ordinary shotgun, he can't do a wild boar. Wild boars not only have fangs and manes, but also have thick skin and grease on their bodies, and shotgun shells are not easy to shoot.

There have been news reports in Australia of bullets bouncing back and hitting a little boy's ass.

Why do wild boars proliferate around the world?

In general, hunting a single wild boar often requires a team of people to go out on horseback, and it is also necessary to avoid the situation where the wild boar attacks people in a frenzy.

In addition to its disposition and combat effectiveness, the success of wild boars lies in their extraordinary environmental adaptability.

Their omnivorous nature is more thorough than that of humans, and almost everyone refuses to come.

In order to eat a variety of things, pigs not only have extraordinary bite ability, but the tibia with the highest bite intensity are crunchy.

And like humans, they have various taste buds such as sour, sweet, bitter, salty, and fresh, and they have as many as 15,000 taste buds, 50% more than the 10,000 of humans. Their sense of smell is also much sharper than that of humans, and they can smell and find even walnuts 2 meters under the snow.

Wild boars not only eat leaves, grass leaves, roots, fruits, but also insects, lizards, snakes, bird eggs, rats, carrion... They eat almost anything they can eat.

In the stereotype of the vast majority of people, pigs are the object of prey.

However, wild boars also prey on leopard cubs and jackals when they are hungry. There are even records of wild boars killing adult leopards and baby buffalo and nibbling on them. Even in India, wild boars have eaten human 4-year-old cubs.

And wild boars also have the same disposition as killer whales and humans, and sometimes simply enjoy the pleasure of killing, not just for food.

Although tigers are natural enemies of pigs, tigers also try to avoid male pigs when hunting. Other animals that can prey on wild boars, in addition to hyenas that dig up the yin, there are also wolves who have also learned to dig the yin.

Humans often claim to have extraordinary endurance, but in fact, wild boars perform very amazingly. Unlike captive domestic pigs, wild boars are not stupid, they run in the forest since childhood, and their endurance is strong enough to support them to run continuously for 15 to 20 kilometers.

You might think that this is not much worse than a marathon runner. But you know, marathons are the limit of countless human beings, and 15 to 20 kilometers is the norm for wild boars. Even some wild boars have learned to fish in shallow waters.

In addition to feeding and extraordinary skills, the success of wild boars lies in their superior reproductive ability.

In fact, there are many animals with strong combat effectiveness, such as bison, elephants and so on. But why they are not as successful as pigs, in addition to eating, the fundamental reason is that they are too fertile.

Don't look at the pigs as big, their pregnancy time is only 4 months, and they can give birth to at least two children a year, generally in April and May and September and October.

It is enough to be able to give birth, and it also has a very high survival rate.

With 4-12 litters per litter, an average of 15 offspring can be produced a year.

The most critical thing is that their sexual maturity cycle is extremely fast, usually in a year and a half to sexual maturity, the fastest even 3 months old can have the ability to conceive.

In other words, even in a conservative situation, the pig herd can grow at a rate of 10 times per year.

In actual observation, it is really close to this situation.

In just a few years, a few wild boars can breed thousands of them.

It can be said that in the long process of evolution, those pigs with slow reproductive cycles have been gradually eliminated by pigs with fast reproductive cycles in the inner volume.

In Zhihu, someone once asked why the testicles of a male pig are so large.

Word:

Reproductive ability is the core competitiveness of boars.

  • Boars can ejaculate for up to 30 minutes and can shoot up to 1 pound of semen.
  • This is the real reproductive involution!

But this has also created a species legend of pigs.

In short, as one of the most successful omnivores, pigs rely on strong reproductive ability, rapid growth rate, and defense ability...

No, even if human industrial civilization is so developed today, wild boars are still raging in human territory.

There are 1 million wild boars in China, mainly concentrated in Anhui, Shaanxi, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Sichuan, Henan, Heilongjiang and other provinces, the number of wild boars in individual provinces exceeds 100,000, but the pig herd is generally relatively concentrated, so the number of wild boars in a county can exceed 20,000.

Why do wild boars proliferate around the world?

Last year in Nanjing, a wild boar broke into a milk tea shop

In the United States, as many as 5 million wild boars are flooded.

Why do wild boars proliferate around the world?

American wild boar raiders since 1982

Even recent estimates have been made that the number of wild boars in the United States is close to 9 million.

Man-pig wars are often staged:

Why do wild boars proliferate around the world?

There are also millions of wild boars in Europe, and 2 million in Italy alone, causing tens of thousands of traffic accidents every year.

France had 1 million wild boars in 2009 and claimed to have declared war on wild boars.

Why do wild boars proliferate around the world?

But a decade later, the total number of wild boars in France rose to 2 million.

Even as an island country, Japan has 30,000 wild boars, and the British wild boar is also flooded, as early as 2008, tried to inject contraceptives to control the number of wild boars, but the cost is high and low, and later still have to rely directly on modern weapons, but some "animal protection people", through the use of feces to trick the way, sabotage hunting activities.

As for whether the wild boar that was hunted can eat it...

If you are purely a food, of course, you can eat it, less fat, more muscle.

However, wild boars may carry parasites and pathogenic bacteria, disinfected with quicklime, buried deep in situ, and harmless treatment is the most appropriate. According to the regulations, if the amount is large, after quarantine, it can be processed into animal feed.

Humans eat indiscriminately or over-contact with wild animals, it is really worth reminding, whether AIDS, new crown and other various germs originally originated from wild animals.

However, the offspring of the hybridization of wild boars and domestic pigs, the resulting pig breed, the wild fragrant pig, not only grows fast, but also tastes very good.

Why do wild boars proliferate around the world?

Wild meat is firm, delicious and mellow; Fat is not greasy, lean meat is not wood.

Just right, a famous dish in Sichuan:

Why do wild boars proliferate around the world?

As a Sichuan person, I say that I love to eat it the most

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